Simple Illusion
by Vixen2004
Summary: RENT Roger is such an in-depth character that it would be pure ludicrous to assume his characterization could be completed within the confines of a two hour play. Hence my attempt to bring him to life in rather a disheveled story about his warped past.
1. The Unmentioned Sister

Roger's hands had grown exceedingly callused from the vast amount of time he had spent pouring over his guitar. Each finger had a varying degree of serious injury, since his thumb was obviously used much more than his pinkie. He had read somewhere that evolutionists believe the pinkie would someday cease to exist due to lack of use. Wow, that would suck. How would his great-great-grandchildren ever learn how to play the guitar? Roger pitied their poor, tortured souls and they weren't even born yet.  
  
Roger caught himself musing over his precious pinkies and turned crimson from embarrassment. What kind of man gazed at his nails all day long wondering if they would ever stop being hereditary? Geesh, that was a disturbing thought. With a couple violent shakes of his head, Roger attempted to clear his mind and continue on with practice.  
  
There was an abrupt knock on the door. The knock was obnoxiously loud and echoed in his skull much longer than the visitor had ever intended it too.  
  
"Can I disturb you for a minute?" A pitchy voice shouted from the deserted hallway.  
  
"You already have," came Roger's tart reply.  
  
As if his sister hadn't already known that.  
  
The door flew open with such exhilarating speed that Roger was nearly thrown off his crummy old bed. He then set eyes on his infamous younger sister, who happened to be very well known for her opinionated views, squeaky agitating voice, and detestable hatred towards Riddilin. Her motto went along the lines of, "If God meant for me to be this way, then why the bloody hell bother to change it?"  
  
His sister's blazing green eyes seemed to be set afire as she stood in his threshold gawking. Her eyeballs appeared to be bulging and she had a permanent grin plastered to her face, which exposed her repulsively toothy smile. She certainly wasn't any eye candy, but she was lovable none the less.  
  
"You suck," she stated staring incredulously at the well-loved guitar, arms planted firmly on her bony hips. There was one large grease stain running down the length of her face giving Roger reason to believe she had been hanging around the car wash again.  
  
"Well you're sure as hell not medicated," Roger noted, slightly amused by his sister's display of raw genuineness. He had always wanted to capture that reality in one of his songs but he could never quiet fully grasp it.  
  
"We ran out of pills."  
  
"Ran out?" Roger repeated, totally unconvinced.  
  
"You know what I mean," the little scoundrel quipped, plopping her eleven-year-old body on the bed carelessly, which was how she did most things. Her long dirty blond ponytail bobbed up and down a couple of times before coming to a holt behind her dome shaped head. A few untamed pieces framed her face, achieving that ready and wild look that most girls spent hours trying to attain.  
  
"Oh do I?" Roger questioned, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Enlighten me, where did you stash them this time?"  
  
"The toilet," she replied, taking note of Roger's disappointing glance. "I ran out of ideas," she quickly added.  
  
"That I can see."  
  
"So-ooo what have you been doing all day long. . .besides moping around the house that is."  
  
"I don't mope," Roger shot back in defense. "I ponder. There's a difference, Runty."  
  
"Don't call me Runty!" the girl protested in pure exasperation.  
  
"Runty."  
  
"Shut-up!" And with that, Runty showed off her perfected art at throwing pillows. Pillow fights require a lot of skill that goes unnoticed. It's a very underestimated sport.  
  
"Runty!" Roger repeated, only muffled this time. He got Runty square across the face with the sleeve of his ratty worn out sweatshirt and received a punch in response.  
  
"Get off me you lard head!"  
  
"Runty!"  
  
"St—op!"  
  
"Runty Runty Runty!"  
  
"Ugh! When will you ever mature?!" Runt asked in a half squeal, half scream. She reminded her older brother of a tortured pig. It was rather humorous.  
  
"Oh excuse me Ms. I-Think-I'll-Hide-My-Pills-In-The-Toilet."  
  
"The only pills you'd be able to hide is your Prozac."  
  
"I wouldn't hide those," Roger retorted in an almost comical tone.  
  
"You'll be lucky if you don't OD on them."  
  
"Very funny."  
  
"I know." Runty beamed in a gloating manner. She certainly didn't suffer from being humble. One might actually refer to her as cocky.  
  
"So-ooo," the pre-teen began once again, for it was her favorite opening line and she was desperate to change the subject to anything other than her name. "How are you planning to spend your last days of summer before college?"  
  
The previously posed question threw Roger completely off guard. Since when did his sister mention that? It was almost embarrassing how casual she was about it, asking in a mild tone while gingerly picking lint balls off of her plaid flannel shirt.  
  
"College?" Roger repeated, placing his guitar down gently. He treated his instrument as though it were a live being, a baby even, for it was more sacred to him than all he considered precious. And Roger didn't find most things precious. He was thought of as an utter pessimist and Runty never let him forget it. 'You have such a negative outlook on life!' she would whine on a daily basis. Her brother would simply look at her, unblinking, and reply, 'It's not a negative view, it's a realistic view.' At this point Runty usually stormed out of the room in a fit of pure rage. She had a one- track mind set on pursuing happiness and it was note easily altered. That fact alone provided quiet a contrast in the Davis household. The opposing siblings could spend hours on end arguing until they were blue in the face. Well, technically Roger turned red, and Runty transformed into a rather disturbing shade of purple. It was an intriguing sight to behold if you could actually stomach it. But I digress.  
  
"Oh, that's right, you don't want to go to college."  
  
Runty's cracking prone voice brought Roger back to the harsh reality of the situation he found himself in at the moment. Great. He'd much rather be in La-La Land than facing his interrogator's never ending string of questions.  
  
"It's not that I don't want to go—I can't."  
  
"Since when?" Runty demanded.  
  
"Since I flunked outta school."  
  
The conversation paused momentarily.  
  
"When did this happen?"  
  
"Last week," Roger answered nonchalantly.  
  
"Mom's gonna kill you," Runt stated in that taunting child like reform.  
  
A small smirk played at the corner of the budding artist's lips. "Oh please," he buffed, trying not to crack a smile. That would be so un-Roger like. He took his little sister by the shoulders and began to guide her to the door. Some kids just can't take a hint. "Mom's never home long enough to get mad anyway."  
  
"She has to work dummy, you know that." Runty began to resist Roger's pushing. "Besides, it doesn't take that long to get mad at something. I mean, look at how easily YOU get pissed off."  
  
"I'm an angst ridden poet," Roger stated firmly as if that would explain it all. And it did. For him.  
  
"Angst ridden? What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Will you quit putting 'bloody' in front of everything?!" Roger pleaded, picking up his little sister and physically tossing her out of his sanctuary. He was at a devastating lack of options. "You're not even English," he added as an after thought.  
  
"How do you know?" Runty implied as she tumbled head over scruffy heels to the ground. Skid marks were like her tattoos, each one she showed off with bubbling pride. So when she received a new edition to her vulgar collection, she didn't curse the antagonist off, she just grinned stupidly at her new minor wound. It wasn't that hard to get them in her house. The family couldn't afford any decent carpartening and she was drawn rather relentlessly to rough housing. Thus this created the perfect opportunity to gain scratches and bruises and she looked forward to every one of them.  
  
"Just shut-up and leave me alone," Roger snapped, agitated by the thought of college, for he had spend so long trying to forget. He slammed the door in Runty's face and retreated back to his isolated bed. He poured mournfully over his guitar as the so-called 'angst ridden poet' once again cut himself off from the rest of the world. 


	2. Undeniable Blubber

Fat.  
Fat.  
Fat.  
  
That was all she could hear. All the millions of words in the English language and "fat" was the only one she could think of.  
  
She allowed her body to sink beneath the plentiful amount of bubbles and let out a sigh so laden with emotions even she couldn't decipher. At least her bulging stomach was hidden from her distraught view. It nearly killed her to look at the horrid thing. All flabby and splotchy, it was almost as if she wasn't even human anymore.  
  
It wasn't a mental thing. Not at all. It was a fact. Any random passer by on the New York streets could easily see that she was exceedingly over weight and in dire need of some serious exercise. She already knew anorexia wasn't the answer, it never was. She had plenty of classmates ruin their lives due to the latter and possessed no intentions of following in their deranged, misguided footsteps.  
  
Almost content for a small moment, she began to relax, thoroughly enjoying her hard-achieved bliss of her blubber. Of course that was until she noticed the blubber on her arms. She knit her brow together in determination and thrust her shoulders under the bubble blanket. There, that solved that. Once again she made a desperate attempt to enjoy her soak until she realized her jiggling thighs were sticking out in the most obnoxious way possible. With a loud splash she hid those, too.  
  
It was then that the bathtub over flowed.  
  
Talk about the lowliest of moments. Every girl has her PMS day and her sobbing day and her whining day, but not every one of us has a totally demoting gut wrenching day. I mean, what do you say to something like that anyway? If it were a TV show, it would be hilarious. But the thing is, it wasn't. It was an event that occurred in horribly shocking reality. She had just over-flowed her own bathtub with her robustness. It was pathetic. Absolutely. Totally. Utterly. Pathetic.  
  
It didn't help any that she was a hopeless romantic. She practically lived off her adored soap operas and was officially addicted to those cheesy dollar tree novels that sold the most corny sex situations. The weirdest one she had encountered thus far was the elevator scene. I mean, really now. Who has sex in a frickin' elevator?  
  
My point exactly.  
  
But logic didn't matter to her. As long as the two characters were caught up in that ever so envious thing called love, she was eternally thrilled and could only wish she were the one embedded in the yellow-ing pages as opposed to the heroine.  
  
But no. She was sitting at home over-flowing her bathtub.  
  
How terribly poetic.  
  
Choking back the too familiar tears, she raised herself from the warm waters – well, what warm water was left anyway – and shuddered as she faced herself in the demonic mirror that had cursed her mornings every day of her life. She was a fat baby, a fat toddler, a fat kid, and now a fat teen who was almost a fat woman. She had been plagued from the day she was born. She often wondered if she was doomed until the apocalypse, in which, upon the returning of Christ, she would immediately request a new body. But then again he would most likely scoff at her and send her straight to hell, since she was an embarrassment to all of God's other creations. And her hell would be plastered with mirrors. Or worse yet, fun house mirrors. The kind that stretched your body out to make it look fatter than it seemed. In her case, it made her being look like an entirely separate planet.  
  
Oh the joys of adolescence.  
  
She threw on her XXX Large bath rob and groped around for one of her romance novels she could lose herself in. The one good thing about being fat, however, was that she was very well endowed. The cover women may have tiny waists, but SHE had an incredible monstrosity of a chest. Bigger than any of theirs, of which they were probably all plastic anyway. She half expected them to melt when she lugged her beloved books to the beach (to which, of course, she arrived in very modest swim shorts and a colossal T- shirt. She had even resorted to men's swim trunks once. It was hell, trust me.)  
  
And so, locking herself in her room, she escaped not to a guitar, but to a different genre all together. One that she could pursue without flunking in school. On that may actually benefit her GPA. She had enhanced her vocabulary incredibly. She now knew eighteen different terms for "tits" and "cocks" (for they were the usual word of reference in those grimy, raw clearance rack pages.) Not that she would ever find those on the SATs, but it was somewhat interesting to recite them all in her head during history class. It kept her head up and prevented inevitable drooling. Which, of course, if unattended to, led to inevitable snickering.  
  
Crawling under the covers in a defeated sort of way, she laid back on her pillow, preparing to go far far away from any mirrors, D cups, bathtubs, french-fries, or anything else that reminded her of her Jello-like blubber.  
  
To affirm the bookworm myth, she was undeniably isolated. But then again she was never given the chance to be anything but. And who knew of how much love and excitement she was capable of feeling? No one ever ventured further than to say anything other than a monotone 'what's up' or 'how are you?' She was simply ignored – which she most definitely preferred as opposed to the other disgraceful option of being the infamous gossip topic of the day. Life was not in the least enthralling and she would much rather not even be part of it. Being human was an insult to her well- disguised intelligence.  
  
The front door to her dilapidating apartment flew open with a sudden gust of wind, or so she thought. Then she recognized her mother's foot steps as she thud-thudded up the shanty stairs and peered into the un-cleaned bathroom. There was a moment of tension that was followed by a tired, worn out sigh.  
  
"Oh April, you really should clean up after yourself. You know, you're getting to old for this."  
  
But April had already thrown the covers over her head and pretended to be fast asleep. 


	3. The Infamous Insults Of Ziggy

The perpetual bouncing of the basketball was driving Roger to and beyond the brink of insanity. He drew in a deep meaningful breath and calmly reminded himself once again exactly why he was friends with Ziggy. What kind of a name was Ziggy anyway?  
  
"I made it!" Ziggy hollered into their frosty surroundings in response to his spontaneous (and rather rare) swish. "Three points baby! Wo- hooo!"  
  
"Three points?" Roger repeated confused. He leaned against the metal pole of the basketball hoop deep in thought. His butt was practically frozen to the pavement but he didn't really care. He was used to suffering – and problems gave him more depressing songs to whine about anyway.  
  
"I thought you said baskets were only worth two . . ."  
  
"I did," Ziggy confirmed, palming the orange ball as he swaggered over to his best friend's position. "But this here," he indicated by pointing, "this here is called the three point line."  
  
Roger blinked a couple of times.  
  
"But if your all running up and down this so-called court while hanging onto whatever sweaty guy you're put up against, how do you have time to look at the floor and see if your feet are touching some random line?"  
  
"Dork wad," Ziggy buffed. "It's not just a random line, it's the three point line!"  
  
"It's still a line," Roger retorted, flicking a miniscule pebble into oblivion. Hmm, oblivion . . . that seems like a good name for a song . . .  
  
"Yeah whatever."  
  
Mmm, good comeback, Roger thought to himself. But then again, Ziggy wasn't known for his mental capacity. In fact, he wasn't known for much of anything at all. Other than being annoying, that is. He wasn't anywhere near good enough to join the 'jock flock', as Runty called them (for his previous swish had been a stroke of pure luck) so he had resorted to taunting Roger and following him around all day with a rather twisted image of friendship. But even though the relationship was about as smooth as sandpaper, the two hung on to each other because they were all they had left. It was either be losers together or be a loser alone. And occupying the lowest rung on the social ladder was a much easier position to fill with someone accompanying you.  
  
Ziggy made a sad attempt to repeat his previous move and ended up tripping on his permanently untied shoelaces.  
  
"Klutz," Roger laughed, maybe for the first time this week.  
  
"Oh stuff your face! I'd like to see you come out here and try this!"  
  
Roger quirked an eyebrow, almost on the verge of a smile.  
  
"You have the creativeness of a french-fry."  
  
"What the hell was that supposed to mean?" Ziggy demanded, swinging his lanky arms around wildly in protestation. "Besides," he added, "I'm Irish anyway."  
  
You would have to be blind not to realize that. With a million tiny freckles parading across his up turned nose and blazing green eyes, he seemed to fit the part well. For most of his life he even sported a mane of wild red hair but that ended with a very bad bleaching accident. Now he was covering the mess he made with jet-black hair dye, but Roger knew in time it would eventually grow out, and he could start laughing at him again.  
  
"That I can see," Roger noted. "But seriously, stuff your face? No wonder you're not on the honor roll. You need some new material my friend."  
  
"It's not like any of the jocks are on the honor roll anyway."  
  
"So that's all your aspiring to be at the moment? That's your life ambition, to be a jock?"  
  
"A-hem, at least I'M still in school."  
  
"Aw man, fuck you."  
  
Ziggy smirked.  
  
"You have the creativeness of a french-fry," the dinky senior repeated to his fuming friend. "I mean, come on now. Fuck you? You're the artist, you should be able to do better than that."  
  
Ziggy chucked the ball at Roger, or at least tried to. It missed his outstretched hands by a mile and the teen had to run a million steps to get it. Playing basketball with Ziggy was almost as hard a work out as actually playing the game right way.  
  
After retrieving the stupid thing, Roger retraced his path and hobbled over to his friend who was planted firmly at the foul line, for it was the only shot he could occasionally make. Feeling the threat of his pride, Roger tried to calculate the distance that separated him from the hoop so he could throw the ball with just the right amount of force to outdo his accident-magnet partner.  
  
"French-fry," Roger scoffed, almost finding the situation humorous.  
  
"Hey, you're not French, are you?"  
  
The blonde rolled his eyes. "We have such in depth discussions."  
  
"You're not answering my question," Ziggy persisted.  
  
"I don't know what the hell I am. But Runty seems to think we're English."  
  
"English?" Ziggy muttered, crunching up his ski slope nose.  
  
"She's developed a infatuation with the word 'bloody'."  
  
"Ah. I see."  
  
Roger stomached his rare butterflies and chucked the ball at the backboard. It bounced off with great zest and gusto and landed itself right square between Ziggy's eyes.  
  
"Holy shit you son of a bitch!"  
  
Roger frowned, remembering once again how many times he had requested Ziggy not to swear in front of his sister. It got to the point where Roger tried to make a rule that only he could swear because he wasn't in the habit of doing it at home. But trying to train Ziggy to do something –anything, really – was like throwing gasoline on a fire. It only got worse and worse and worse as time progressed.  
  
"Maybe I should stick with my guitar," Roger mused.  
  
"No way man. You suck at that too!"  
  
The artist shoved his demoting friend onto the pavement with no remorse.  
  
"Like you could do better."  
  
And this was how the two had spent their Saturday afternoons for the past five years. Every weekend it was the same routine. It wasn't like they were ever invited to parties, or anything exciting for that matter. It was either try to play basketball or watch TV. Ziggy wasn't a talker and had no consideration for Roger's feelings that he tried to communicate through song. Ziggy wasn't cruel, just incredibly stupid. So the angst-ridden poet (I love how that sounds) had given up trying to share his emotions and devoted at least forty minutes a day to sulking. He probably would have spent way more time doing such if his little puny sister didn't interrupt him so frickin' often. But Roger wouldn't have to worry about that for long. In eight weeks she'd be back in school, and Roger could take all the time he wanted to be depressed and ponder the meaning of his life. And there was always and added bonus. Ziggy would most likely be off to community college (but even that was if-y) so he wouldn't need to be insulted twenty four seven.  
  
With an awkward glance, Roger tried to figure out whether or not he would actually miss Ziggy when he was gone. He didn't have much time to think about it though. For the next thing he knew his friend tackled him to the ground in one ungraceful sweep and declared, "Let's move onto football." 


	4. Contemplating Happiness

"Imagine that," Runty mused on a particularly scorching summer morning. She stood motionless, which is a rather rare action for her, and took in her older brother curled up in a God-Forsaken corner. "You, sulking. Now there's something you don't see every day."  
  
"At least I don't hang out at the car wash," Roger retorted cynically as he plucked a few random strings on his beloved guitar. "Besides, there's nothing better to do anyway."  
  
"Because God forbid you actually go outside."  
  
"It's too hot," Roger replied stubbornly.  
  
"But it's summer!"  
  
"I am perfectly aware of that Runty."  
  
"Don't call me Runty!" The girl squealed, stomping one of her over grown feet.  
  
"Runty."  
  
"Stop!"  
  
Roger shook his head in amusement and continued playing.  
  
Runty couldn't see why her brother enjoyed bathing in his utter boredom. It was almost as if he wanted to be miserable. And maybe he did. But it was such a waste. His life was just going to pass him by.  
  
"Ya know, one day when you're off in a nursing home rotting somewhere and searching for your dentures, your gonna look back and wonder what the hell you did with your life and find the simple conclusion: not much."  
  
There was a momentary silence that seemed to over take the room for a couple of seconds while Runty swayed from side to side impatiently. She could only stay still for so long as was dying to hear her brother's response; IF there would be any response.  
  
"Leave my mark," he stated.  
  
"What?!"  
  
"My mark," the downer repeated. "Something people will remember me by, preferably through song."  
  
Runty scratched the top of her head, which was entirely hidden by a massive array of tangled clumps commonly known as hair.  
  
"But you can't play guitar."  
  
"Oh fuck off."  
  
There was a pause, which was abruptly interrupted by a loud victory whoop originating from none other than the former Riddilin user.  
  
"O-hh!" Ziggy should have heard that! He'd kill you for hypocrisy alone!"  
  
Roger glared defiantly. "Don't they need you at the car wash or something?"  
  
His sister was untouchable at the moment and too preoccupied with her infamous pig-style gloating to take any heed of him. She frolicked around the room chanting interminably "I'm gonna te-ll! I'm gonna te-ll!"  
  
It was at that moment that Roger determined he hated little kids.  
  
Driven purely by insanity, Roger gently threw down his guitar (for it does require a measure of abounding skill to throw something—anything—down gently) and tore out of the apartment like his very ass was on fire.  
  
He bolted straight for the sidewalk and knocked numerous pedestrians over by doing so. Common New Yorkers were use to such a spectacle, but tourists shunned it as disrespect. "They're just lucky I don't have a gun," Roger muttered, his face darkening simultaneously.  
  
'Alright—I'm outside Runty!' the artist thought bitterly even though he possessed no telepathic tendencies what so ever. 'Now what? What the hell's so great about being outside anyway? O-oh, look clouds! Yippee! Oh and hey, check out that over flowing trash can! Aww, and there's a hobo starving there on that street corner. How terribly gratifying. Wow, don't I feel better now!'  
  
With a defeated sigh, Roger sat his bum down on the glistening sidewalk and nearly choked to death on the excess smog being emitted from a nearby bus exhaust. He pondered whether or not a search for happiness was worth it in the first place. Was it in vain? Was it worth getting hurt again and again while pursuing something for the ultimate good? How long did it take to find happiness anyway? And where, exactly, do you find it? It wasn't a tangible substance. It wasn't even visible. You could feel it but—how? How do you make yourself feel something when you don't even know what it is? And how the hell are you supposed to eternally escape the suffocating grasp of depression anyway? The Prozac was a joke between him and Runty but he never seriously contemplated the effects of the apparently useful drug.  
  
But then he'd be plastic.  
  
He'd be hiding behind a false facade; an image of fake happiness. Artificial happiness. He'd find joy in completely senseless things and he'd be too doped up to realize it. Besides, he HAD to experience reality to produce his songs. Roger's songs were the raw truth of life itself, completely un-sugarcoated and un-sanitized for the artistically attuned. It was the epitome of him. How could he sacrifice such honesty to be blissfully ignorant? How could ignore reality? How could he throw away his observant nature? How could he give up his independent logic and flow with the rest of the teeny bopper world? No, he couldn't. And it was as simple as that.  
-----------------------  
Hey, itty-bitty side note here. These first couple chapters have been written solely for the exposition. The real plot line is gonna start up next chapter. So for those of you getting rather bored have no fear. April is destined to bump into Roger sometime in the next couple chapters. Sometime SOON, I mean. Ahhh, I can just imagine how mad ya'll would be if I ENDED the story with the encounter. Oh geez, I'd lose my jugular vein, wouldn't I? Hmmm, maybe I won't do that. Till next time, I bid thee ado. 


	5. The Result Of Rage

567. 568. 569.  
  
April smirked as she thought about the last two digits of the previous number.  
  
570. 571. 572.  
  
"Darling, how many times are you planning to trace the outline of that plate anyway?"  
  
April sighed in response to her worried mother and didn't bother to look up. It wasn't like she was missing anything anyway. Her mother was only washing the dishes for the millionth time this day; it was what she always did when trying to confront her daughter about her unfortunate circumstances. But there was a point to the washing at the moment, since a silent dinner had just terminated itself, and all that was left to scrub was the one plate April was so incredibly infatuated with.  
  
"600," she answered.  
  
Her mother paused, chewing on a hangnail, for it was one of her numerous annoying habits.  
  
"Why 600?"  
  
"Because that's how many pounds I weigh."  
  
"It is not!" her exasperated mother shrieked, eager to defend her daughter from—well—herself.  
  
"It's what I look like," April continued to mope, letting her finger follow the plate's contour continuously. "There."  
  
"There what?"  
  
April beamed victoriously. "600."  
  
Her mother had succeeded in ripping her hangnail completely off using solely her teeth.  
  
"You're being ridiculous. Stop it, now."  
  
April smirked at the weak attempt of discipline.  
  
"Or you'll what?"  
  
There was a predictable pause and April's mother busied herself by washing the already sparkling dishes. The water splashed onto the cracked, insect infested kitchen floor as she dove her chapped hands into the suds. April was used to this choppy, uptight behavior coming from her caffeine addicted mother just as her mother had grown accustomed to her daughter's bipolar reactions. The enraged form was usually dominant and an explosion was destined to occur anytime now.  
  
"Your consular called," her mother put in sheepishly, trying to instill some of the calming virtues Mr. Golsop had tried so hard to embed in her daughter.  
  
"Good for him. He can dial nine digits."  
  
"That's not what I was trying to imply."  
  
April's mother fought the dire urge to smash the gray chipped plate that the problem child had so relentlessly occupied herself in tracing.  
  
It turned out she didn't have to. April performed the task for her.  
  
"It's not like he helps me anyway!" the teen screeched as she bolted upright, knocking the chair over while doing so. Her veins became clearly evident through out her face, for they showed like green snakes under her zit-stained complexion. If Runty were present, she would have most definitely referred to the latter as a mutant.  
  
In response to the much expected, yet still abrupt, shouts of the obese female, April's mother plastered on a fake smile and said in a mock sugary sweet tone, "Baby, don't clench your fists so hard. Your nails have a tendency to leave scars."  
  
"I don't give a flying shit about my scars!"  
  
April was referring to both the accidental and purposeful scars. Mr. Golsop had meandered his way into her life first by her hashing urges. It took two years before he realized he would never succeed in making his patient a reformed cutter since she simply refused to drop the habit. But he still insisted on coming by once a week trying to crack the source of the problem. When he found out that this single parent family had unfortunately formed itself before April was even born, he was certain that the only reason for the razor blade using could be her weight. But like most clueless counselors, he was completely off track and too stupid to even realize it. Besides, April had no intentions of stopping her cutting any time soon regardless if the cause was obvious.  
  
"Don't start this again . . ." her mother's voice trailed off into oblivion, leaving room for one of April's rebellious responses.  
  
There wasn't anything for the desperate mother to do but sigh and rub her temples fervently, leaving fragile soap bubbles through out her hair.  
  
"Well why the hell not?! It's not like keeping all this stupid anger in helps any."  
  
"And you wonder why people don't talk to you," her mother remarked, purposely keeping her gentle voice soothing in response to her daughter's deafening screaming.  
  
"It's because I'm fat!"  
  
"It's because of your temper."  
  
Redness started to coat the blue-green veins in a series of splotchy marks that continued to travel down her scarred arms to her tightly clenched hands.  
  
April marched across the cramped kitchen and tore into the make-shift living room—which consisted of nothing more than a torn sofa and a well- worn black and white TV.  
  
She immediately, if not sooner, came stomping out and thrust a hard covered book into her mother's face.  
  
"Look! Look at this!" April screeched, waving the book around for emphasis. Her mother barley had enough time to read the title. The word's 'Understanding Your Teenager' were printed in thick blue letters that paraded across the top of the cover.  
  
"Were you reading my self help books again?!"  
  
"SELF help? This doesn't look like self help to me," April pounded vocally, throwing the book aside. "It says in there to 'allow your children to let their feelings out, for it will encourage in-depth discussions and numerous situations of trust.'"  
  
"Baby, just because it's in the book doesn't mean it's right-"  
  
"You don't believe me."  
  
"No, April I never said that-"  
  
"You don't believe me!!!!"  
  
The windows were beginning to rattle now for sound waves are more powerful that one may expect. It was almost as if a train was passing through.  
  
April dug her hands into the shattered glass and ignored the few fragments that were stuck in her palm as she tore open the book that had laid so lifelessly on the floor for a mere two seconds.  
  
"See?!" she cried, opening to page 175. "SEE?!"  
  
"April, I believe you! You know I believe you, I always do."  
  
"Yeah right, you believed Dad too and look at how far that got you."  
  
Her mother's eyes welled up with tears since she was not one of the self-sufficient, independent, bitter moms by far.  
  
"That hurt sweetie," she answered in a constricted tone, diving for the sink to work within the comfort of her all too familiar bubbles once more.  
  
"It did? Good then. Now do something about it!"  
  
Her mother kept her eyes glued to the foaming water.  
  
"What are you trying to say April?" she asked, barley coherent.  
  
"I'm saying I do all this shit and you never do anything about it! You never stop me, you never punish me, and you do nothing! You just sit there and take it all. It's embarrassing! My own mother can't even stick up for herself. Good God at least hit me!"  
  
Her mother's lower lip began to tremble as she held back the waterfall of tears that were dying to come out.  
  
"HIT ME!" April screamed, her hands forming into fists once again, which rammed the shards of plate deep into her skin.  
  
"No," her mother whispered.  
  
April could feel her jugular vein beginning to pop and she knew she had to leave before she ended up killing herself in a fit of rage.  
  
"Fine. Then I'll do the hitting."  
  
And with that April whacked her mother across the face with a force so powerful it was a wonder why the defeated women's brains didn't come gushing out of her ear. The fragments of glass had transferred from April's bleeding hand to the skin on her mother's sunken cheekbone. It a matter of seconds April was standing over the woman that had cared for her since birth, smirking wildly in some sort of demented pride. With a final short laugh, she turned around and left her mother curled up on the kitchen floor. With that she kicked open the pathetic piece of wood that they referred to as a door and began to make her way out into the ironic New York sunlight which was usually disguised as smog.  
  
"I love you," April through she heard her mother whimper, just before she slammed the door in the woman's face.  
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Don't worry, April and Roger will meet in the next chapter. I'm not planning to make this exposition drag on forever. Heheheh. Though now that you mention it. . . .


End file.
